


The Evil Men Do

by Smirkdoctor (orphan_account)



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Allusions to Shakespeare, Flowery Prose, M/M, Restorationist leanings, heroes being baddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 19:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16687279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Smirkdoctor
Summary: A short backstory of the Holmes and Watson of Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald" universe. In a setting where good is evil and the moon is blood-red, these two are very bad...and it's so good.





	The Evil Men Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nottoolateforthegame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nottoolateforthegame/gifts).



Since the rise of the Great Old Ones, the Vernets have studied this enemy in our quest for Restoration. Under the blood moon, we gather to share knowledge and ponder the ignorance of the rest of the world--the blindly following, glazed-eyed cultists. What simple minds would accept violent oppression for so many in trade for a modicum of comfort for the few? No human resides in Albion who has not noted the sudden absence of an acquaintance in tandem with a whispered, worshipful word that a Royal had been glimpsed in their City looking well-fed and regal.

My ancestors sought to counter the purple prose of the _Necronomicon_. That text, scrawled in the blood of the first human sacrifices to Cthulhu, tells the history of each race of the ruling creatures. Early cultists scribed incantations to summon ancient evil from the waters around the New World and Albion, to give these nebulous forms a corporeal, deadly shape. 

They succeeded. 

The evil prayers of the _Necronomicon_ spun vortexes of dark magic and brought to the surface the inevitable ruling powers of Earth. But this book includes no guidance for after the rising. Blind obedience, eyes averted from those madness-inducing faces, was expected. 

Blind obedience was attained.

In contrast, the _Vernet Canon_ is a slim volume containing no history. There is no need—the past and current plight of humankind is available in twisted form via the commemorative poems and orgiastic stage plays performed on Royal holidays. It contains no prayers, no prostration before the mysticism that has destroyed the minds of our race. 

Instead, we focus on practical information. 

Each chapter details the anatomy of one family of the Great Ones. Vulnerabilities are marked and proposed methods of violence listed. Following sections postulate variations in anatomy that might result from matings of Royal to human. These accounts are mere conjecture. For who but a physician educated to serve the Royals, to tend their half-breed offspring, could have any concrete knowledge?

I have long sought the counsel of a practitioner with a Restorationist leaning. But with Albion’s institutions of medical education under tight societal and hence Royal control, where does one find such a man?

Recognizing the danger of our beliefs, members of our rebellion band together, finding protection in the lies we jointly weave. It was during a mission to Vienna that I joined the Strand Players, quickly ascending through the ranks by virtue of my infamous name and, dare I say, great acting ability. 

Onstage we spoke in cloaked words, our appreciation for the awesome beauty of the superior races and their benevolent rule cloaking treasonous intentions. Our true vocation, aided by our constant touring, was the gathering of information. And those skillfully scripted lines, I was told, were written by our brilliant and seditious playwright, a Doctor John Watson.

After months of engagements across Europe, we returned to Albion to create a new program of one acts, and I saw my chance to meet the writer. Entering the office in our sordid rental rooms, I saw a thin, pale man seated behind a scarred wooden table. 

For not the first time, I wondered at his position at the head of this group of Restorationists. The name Watson, after all, is not well known in Restoration circles. Hungry to know him completely, I took the gentleman in with lingering passes of my eyes. 

A tattoo above his left wrist identified him as caretaker to the Royals. Slim, capable hands yielded a quill with surgical assuredness as he scratched out a stage design for the Sandy Great One. I gasped with recognition, slowly opening my own book to the corresponding diagram. 

He glanced at the _Canon_ , then back at me.

“Mr. Vernet?” he inquired, the mask of indifference over his weathered features slipping slightly. I nodded, and he acknowledged his correct guess with a gesture toward a bare wooden chair across from his own. “Please sit.”

“Your thespian talent is admirable, and I have heard of your unparalleled knowledge of the Old Ones. Your scheming mind brought you to us, and allows you to travel easily across borders, even while carrying precious cargo,” he spoke lowly and motioned to the book at the last. 

I nodded my assent and he pulled it toward him.

Watson ran strong, tapered fingers down my lists as he paged through the text. He paused occasionally at phrases that I had revised over my decades of research, and chuckled at the page detailing the anatomies of our own Queen Victoria and her offspring. He shook his head at my crude sketch of Chthuloid-human anatomy and glanced up at me. 

“Our company finds itself in need of a manager. Someone to plan our tours, give the company direction. Perhaps…”--here he raised a conspiratorial eyebrow--“...expose us to a Royal audience.” 

He riffled through his folio and passed me a gloriously-detailed drawing of a Royal-human hybrid. The heading declared it to be Prince Franz Drago. 

“I believe we can be of use to each other.”

**‘;..;’**

Over the following weeks, as the troupe rehearsed a new theatrical spectacle penned to garner us admission to the great stages of Europe, I quietly gathered information about the doctor. Born to a prominent cultist family, he was, by virtue of his intelligence and manual skill, selected to study at the Royal Medical College of Albion. He received training in both human and Royal anatomy and attended the delivery of a Chthuli-human child to the dear Duchess Sophie.

Upon completing his training, Doctor Watson was selected as personal physician to the Royal General in control of Albion forces in the Afghanistan conflict. He worked in this capacity for three years, gradually seeing ever more reprehensible Royal behavior. 

Prisoners of war were not held in humane conditions, but were nearly starved for weeks. At the requested time, the guards then fed each prisoner a large, soporific meal, assuring them over each bite of their imminent release, only to lead them from the prison directly into the General’s quarters. That monster--nay, Royal--then feasted on their bodies, their souls, their fear. 

The General’s tastes eventually turned to younger humans, who required less food, less supervision, and whose boundless fears could satisfy his hunger for longer. Watson was never directly involved with prisoners, until late one night when the rest of his company was sleeping off a celebration heavy with wine. The General asked the doctor to fetch him a meal. When he opened the cell and saw a six-year-old Afghani child, skeletal and with endless fear already in her eyes, he bundled the child to his back and eloped.

A bullet pierced his thigh only one hundred meters outside camp, fired by a dull-eyed soldier ripped from his drunken dreams by the screeching cries of the General. Watson fell face-first into the sand, the girl strapped to his back, too wrung out to scream. He felt strong tentacles graze his body as they removed her and heard the crunch of boots before feeling a searing pain in his shoulder. He knew no more.

The strength of his anger at this cruel Royal behavior toward humans enabled his survival. He regained feeble health at the hands of a small desert band of Restoration fighters, the very sworn enemies of the Albion forces. He studied the history of our movement and began to collect his medical knowledge in roll of rough, handmade paper. 

The movement installed him in a trade voyage back to Albion. On this trip, he contracted a gastrointestinal illness that almost ended him again, and he was cast aside, left to rot by a rutted path. He was found by a member of the theatre group, and the rest can easily be inferred.

**‘;..;’**

Each night, across the space between our bedrolls, the doctor and I made plans for our company’s travel and the evil deeds meant to save our species. Prince Drago seemed an appropriate initial mark. I had studied his habits, and the doctor his family’s anatomy. 

Often, as the doctor slept, I would reach out a finger to stroke over a strong hand splayed across his chest. The thought of that hand yielding a knife, taking a Royal life, would cause me to tremble as I bit my lip against a moan before falling into heated dreams of deaths both grand and petite.

The first night the Prince attended our show, I presented my doctor with a carbon steel surgical kit, gleaming and nestled in purple velvet. I watched his hands reverently stroke the tools and stifled a gasp. He looked up, caught my eyes, and let his own drop to my lips, still red with my stage rouge. 

“It’s only a matter of time now, my dear boy.”

After the performance the night of that first assassination, I dressed in my finest to provide escort to the prince and did not miss the eyes of the doctor lingering over my body. The doctor was unpacking his tools and surveying the rented room, finding the best shadow to hide him until his skill was called for.

**‘;..;’**

I watched, rapt, as his razor slashed through the delicate tissue between Chthuli ribs. Oblivious to the echoing screams, he reached graceful fingers into the oozing mess. Ducking behind the Prince to avoid his flailing tentacles, he quickly located the heart and pulled the still beating muscle out of the chest to sever the aorta.

The squeals of a dying Royal, the splattering of green gore over the walls, the sight of a heart in the Doctor’s hand conspired to make me hard as I leaned against the corner, and I palmed myself over my expensive trousers. My Watson did not miss this movement. 

He smiled lecherously as he began a systematic dissection, nodding and humming as he noted slight variations in anatomy. My eyes followed him, but I refrained from touching myself again. 

I occupied myself with observation as he dissected, sketched, annotated. Then, as he cleaned his tools, I dipped my finger in a puddle of green blood. I trembled at the significance of this night’s actions and decided that such an evil deed merited a grand gesture. 

As I turned back from the signature I had scrolled on the wall, Watson grasped my wrist with the hand not wrapped around his cane. He bent my arm to wipe the blood on his soiled apron, then hiked it above my head, grabbing my chin with his other hand as he pulled me into a kiss and pressed me back against the door. His cane clattered to the floor.

“Tyranny is dead,” he whispered against my lips. Then he inserted his uninjured thigh between my own and bent to mouth at the skin below my ear. He ground his pelvis into me and growled, “The evil that men do…”

I gasped and recited, “...lives after them.” 

I moaned aloud as he found my arousal and cupped it, the heel of his palm grinding against the swollen length of my cock.

“But for tonight, I prefer to live,” he murmured between soft bites to my exposed neck. “I assume you’ve arranged our escape?” 

I whimpered assent. 

“Have we a place to stay for tonight, away from the other players? We must, of course, do all we can to remove suspicion from our family.” 

I bucked my hips against him and he chuckled, dark and low.

“Montague Street,” rasped from my throat. “Take me. There.”

Suddenly he left me, scarcely displaying a limp as he retrieved his cane and case of tools, looking back at me with a wink. 

“Oh, I shall.”

**Author's Note:**

> The quotations after the assassination are from Act Three, Scene One of Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. 
> 
> I apologize if I've blundered the Lovecraftian references-- I'm new to the party and consumed a great deal of his writing and writing about his writing, but I'm sure I've missed something.
> 
> If you haven't read "A Study in Emerald," please do! It's wonderful, and puts an entirely different (but appropriate) spin on the relationships between our favorite characters.
> 
> Happy Holmestice! And thanks to my Twitter and What'sApp support groups for revision and beta help.


End file.
